Nicholas Sparks managed to write on book that was 'not bad' (whether it is actually good depends on your milage) and since then has just been rehashing the same story with less and less enthusiasm and increasingly boring characters and plots. I am grateful for Ryan Gosling in The Notebook and Kevin Costner in Message in a Bottle, but other than that it's all Hallmark level fluff. I completely forgot I had seen Nights in Rodanthe until I red your summary when it hit me like a ton of bricks - that stupid hurrican! - somebody dies at the end!

Like you, I sometimes have an romantic movie itch that needs scratching, I can recommend About Last Night the 2014 version of the Mehmet movie from the eighties with an all black cast, and Something New (2004) with Simon Baker who is just very watchable and having an interracial relationship for a change didn't hurt either.